Netflix Video Speed On FiOS Doubles After Netflix-Verizon Deal

An anonymous reader writes: Verizon now joins AT&T and Time Warner Cable in the list of ISPs on which Netflix streaming has significantly improved after Netflix paid for access to their networks. Ars Technica notes that "[t]he interconnection deals give Netflix a direct connection to the edge of the Internet providers' networks, bypassing congested links, but without receiving priority treatment after entering the networks." The success of these deals, however, gives the ISPs no incentive whatsoever to fix their congested links. Toll roads have, in essence, been created for the internet.

Comments

Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Anonymous Coward]

"Verizon now joins AT&T and Time Warner Cable in the list of ISPs on which Netflix streaming has significantly improved after Netflix paid for access to their networks."

Every company in that list needs a massive boycott. People need to be creating web sites showing a list of who's creating toll roads. (read: default slow lanes)

It doesn't seem bad now, but this will destroy the internet if we allow it.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with that. People won't give up gasoline and they won't give up their shitty media. You can depend on that.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[mentil]

Sure, I'll cancel my broadband subscription with the local monopoly and go back to dialup. But who do they get their upstream bandwidth from? At&t, Verizon, Time Warner or Comcast. Doh!

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[sexconker]

the only way to reach these companies would be to either eschew legal methods of home entertainment (along with 100m other people), or shoot some executives.

Or?

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[thegarbz]

A boycott? My dear friend are you from one of those mythical "ideal world" thingies I've been reading about?

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Anonymous Coward]

"Verizon now joins AT&T and Time Warner Cable in the list of ISPs on which Netflix streaming has significantly improved after Netflix paid for access to their networks."

Every company in that list needs a massive boycott. People need to be creating web sites showing a list of who's creating toll roads. (read: default slow lanes)

It doesn't seem bad now, but this will destroy the internet if we allow it.

Bullshit. Direct Peering agreements (as well as CDN's and caching services) have been around for over a decade and in fact do a lot to make the Internet run better for everyone. The scandal here is not the peering, but rather the fact that instead of being mutual (each side foots its own half of the bill), the ISP's are using their customers as leverage to get paid for it. That practice ought to be banned as a monopolistic and/or unfair business practice.

The summary also makes this erroneous statement:

The success of these deals, however, gives the ISPs no incentive whatsoever to fix their congested links.

When 60% of peak traffic over the edge is from Netflix, pulling all that onto a dedicated peering link in many cases means there's no longer a congestion problem. Direct Peering IS a mechanism for fixing edge congestion.

The problem is that when a company like Comcast refuses to do a mutual direct peering deal with significant traffic sources, it hurts their own users. But the users have no way to get redress or hold their ISP accountable, they can't vote with their wallets either. Netflix doesn't have the option to hold out because there are competing services- the most notable being the cable service Comcast offers. It's also important to note that Comcast also owns Content... something else which needs to be banned.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[ketomax]

What about Google Fiber?

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Rockoon]

The scandal here is not the peering, but rather the fact that instead of being mutual (each side foots its own half of the bill), the ISP's are using their customers as leverage to get paid for it.

No, the scandal here is that the asymmetric arrangement isnt presented honestly, like you didnt do right here.

Settlement free peering has never existed when one side sends significantly more traffic than the other side. Period. Its not something that happens. You can call it extortion if you want, never the less thats not how the business operates now or has ever operated in the past.

In this case the peering agreement need to be asymmetric (one side pays the other) because the bandwidth simply isnt even close to symmetric, but Level 3 (the ISP Netflix uses) does not want to pay the difference. Level 3 approached Netflix with a sweetheart deal, got their business, but now don't want to pay other backbones for the consequences of being Netflix's ISP.

Now given that Netflix itself is saving money because Level 3 isnt charging them a traditional price for the amount of bandwidth that they push, and Level 3 gets away with this by not paying other backbone providers a traditional price for such asymmetric peering, then it only seems natural that Neflix takes that money they are saving using their cheapskate ISP and uses some of it to route around the issues that choosing a cheapskate ISP has caused them.

Decisions have consequences.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[TheReaperD]

The problem with this is that most of us have no alternatives and those few that do tend to have one (1) alternative and it's often another name on the list. The problem is that these companies know this; hell, they've payed good money to make sure it is like this and they're spending even more money to make sure it stays this way. The only way to fix this at this stage is to let your congresspeople know that you'll fire them if they don't fix this.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix isn't the one requesting the traffic. The requests for traffic are coming from Comcast, and Comcast's customers.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[thaylin]

what about the last mile? I am on TWC, but out in the country. I have a choice between twc and ATT.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[thaylin]

Actually settlement free peering has always existed for the last mile providors, who will ALWAYS by definition have a traffic imbalance.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Wootery]

Every company in that list needs a massive boycott.

If some major players (Amazon/eBay/Google/Facebook) took part in, say, putting a banner in their webpages when viewed over such a connection, that would at least raise awareness.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't abuse the words "by definition". Use instead something like "by their nature".

"By definition" is used when an object is identified as a member of a class by showing that object has the characteristics required for membership in the class.

A network operator isn't defined as a last mile provider if there's a traffic imbalance, and a last mile provider doesn't cease being a last mile provider if there is no traffic imbalance.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Rockoon]

Actually settlement free peering has always existed for the last mile providors, who will ALWAYS by definition have a traffic imbalance.

Most last mile providers are tier 3 networks and purchase transit. Thats not "settlement free."

Even Comcast which is tier 2 purchase their primary transit from Tata. They don't get a free ride because they can't do the transit.

Verizon is tier 1. They dont buy transit. They do transit. You dont get to dump many times as much data on another transit network as they dump on yours without consequences. You cannot argue around this because this is the way it is, the way its been, and the way it will continue to be. The burden is on the sender because thats the only way it makes sense to do it. The receiver shouldn't be paying because they may have neither requested nor want it. A lot of people bring up the idea that netflix users "requested" the data. The internet maintains no concept of "requested." Packets are pushed through the network, not pulled.

Netflix's old ISP was Cogent. Remember the issues between Cogent and Level3 back in 2005? Netflix's current ISP, Level 3, didnt want Cogent to get a free ride and shut down the interlinks, but now that Level3 is netflix's ISP they suddenly are all for free rides with everybody? Really?

There is the way you want things to work, and the way they actually work. There is good reason for the way things actually work.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[exploder]

Buying my groceries from a different store for a month is one thing. But how do you expect a boycott of an ISP to work? People cancel their currently-installed service, possibly incurring an early termination fee, then pay to have competing service installed, which probably a) doesn't exist or b) is just another name on the same list?

I'm sorry, but a boycott is just an asinine suggestion in this context.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[geekmux]

Good luck with that. People won't give up gasoline and they won't give up their shitty media. You can depend on that.

Bullshit.

Everyone has their pressure points.

For 99% of us, that would be gasoline at $20/gallon.

Raise the cost of Netflix to $50/month, and you'll see a lot of people abandoning their shitty media too.

Given cost is often THE pressure point, the only thing you can be assured of is cheap entertainment for the mindless masses. And cheap opium in a prescription bottle.

Gotta keep the addicts happy. They might just get out and vote again one day...

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[thaylin]

Except you are not confusing the last mile ISP part of verizon with the commercial ISP of verizon, and the mistake can be summed up in this quote of yours:

The receiver shouldn't be paying because they may have neither requested nor want it.

They DID request it and they DID want it, otherwise it would not have been transmitted through their network. It is not like netflix just randomly sends data to other peoples network.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Mod parent up. Correct use of language is refreshing.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes that's true, but it's not the issue here. Request traffic is a minuscule percentage of the used bandwidth, whereas response traffic is what is hogging the pipe. Pay for what you use.

Yes, Comcast/Verizon/AT&T customers are the ones requesting this media, but Netflix is the one sending it out. Hence an asymmetric peering agreement is needed.

I'm not one to defend any of those fuckheads, but this is how peering has always worked. The only real issue here is that ISPs have been attempting to double dip with internet fast lanes by artificially throttling traffic inside their own networks. What happens outside, up to the link, is not their responsibility. This is the real danger of the FCC's Internet Fastlane bullshit.

Now, if there was actual competition among broadband providers instead of local monopolies everywhere in this country, the peering process would be reversed, since Comcast would actually want to pay Netflix to peer with demand for the content being so high. Instead they own their own fucking content and want to promote that over Netflix, and since they have a monopoly, fuck the consumers.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Talderas]

If you look at the settlement free peering policies for providers you will find that the traffic balance can rarely exceed 1.8:1. Level 3 is a bit shady, in my opinion, in that they don't, at least publicly, list the ratio they are looking for but instead state "as close to even".

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Twanfox]

The point of ISPs extorting money out of companies like Netflix is to serve one of two goals. 1) Gain more profit for doing less work or 2) kill off the services if such costs make them unprofitable. Then, the competing service said ISP offers (or "exclusive" service contracted in) will be the only one available for those ISP customers to purchase. Win/Win for the ISP, and a loss for all of us, since one often does NOT pick their provider.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Garybaldy]

They should pay me to prevent a soon to be end of life.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Shatrat]

Or maybe they get it from Level 3, Cogent, XO, Integra or some other wholesale carrier. Competition is actually pretty healthy once you get out of that residential last-mile. Also, if you switch from an ISP that relies on selling video services to one that is more focused on data and voice, you will find they are much less dickish about impairing your connection to content providers.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Rockoon]

They DID request it and they DID want it

On the internet, you cannot tell. You seem to be missing this key fact. If you make the receiver pay instead of the sender, I will set up a network tomorrow and send shit towards your network all day and night, and then when you refuse to pay the bill I send you I will file a lawsuit and send notice to your credit agencies. While you are busy deciding if its worth fighting me in court or not, I'll be speaking to the press telling them what a deadbeat you are for not paying your bandwidth bill.

Whats that? The way you imagine things requires honest actors? Yeah.. thats the point... thats why its not set up that way. its set up to that the sender pays so that it doesnt matter if they are honest or not.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[leonbev]

You better roll out another broadband option for your neighborhood before starting your "boycott", as The Cable Company (i.e. Verizon and AT&T) and The Phone Company (Time Warner and Comcast) are usually the only two broadband options available for most people.

I'd love to have a third fiber or wireless network option run by my local municipality, but I doubt that it's going to happen considering that the mayor and city council are probably getting campaign donations from the aforementioned Phone Company and Cable Company.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[nine-times]

When 60% of peak traffic over the edge is from Netflix, pulling all that onto a dedicated peering link in many cases means there's no longer a congestion problem. Direct Peering IS a mechanism for fixing edge congestion.

Well we'll see. I think part of the concern is that Verizon can now start using this as leverage against anyone and everyone. They can basically make sure their peering connections are generally congested for anyone moving a significant amount of data, and then say, "If you want things to improve, pay us a bunch of money to become a Premium peering partner!" Taken to the extreme, the Internet could cease to become an open network, and instead become a AOL-styled walled garden.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Dr J. keeps the nerd]

It's such a fantastic case. Netflix is the largest traffic source, and they try to run their business with almost no infrastructure. Their computing and storage is almost all Amazon -- a direct competitor -- and their distribution is through ISPs that also run competing TV services. Some fraction of the disputes with Comcast and Verizon have been over inter-city distribution. The argument from the ISPs is that while the customers have paid for the access portion, the way Netflix or their CDN partners have been using their networks they've essentially been dumping long-haul responsibility on the ISPs. When they're negotiating with Netflix for "paid" access, some of it is about CDN hosting or local interconnect rather than just "now we'll peer at 300G in SF". Because this is America, Netflix's pleas to have "all traffic treated the same because it's an Internet right" are more about infrastructure cost avoidance than about maintaining YOUR rights. Net Neutrality says the ten millionth copy of a Breaking Bad episode being streamed from California to Texas is just as important as unique data you send on that link, and if that stinks it up so be it. It doesn't get us to the obvious technical solution of a cache-box in-state (if not in-city), but is a convenient hammer to pull out in commercial discussions over CDN hosting. So, as much as you may love the internet and feel there should be some kind of totally impractical rights framework involved to ensure that there is a flag available to wrap around the Internet's abuse, consider spending ten minutes thinking through the motivations of the actors involved. At the end of those ten minutes you may decide that you want Netflix holding that hammer -- the ISP's leverage has been talked about a lot and brinksmanship is apparently part of what makes America great -- but at least you'll do it realizing that all of the companies involved would like you / the Internet as a hostage.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[jbmartin6]

You misunderstood the point. If Comcast charges each subscriber an extra $5, for example, in order to pay for Netflix traffic infrastructure, this is undesirable since any given subscriber may or may not be using Netflix. Now, if they had some sort of metering system to only charge Netflix users the extra, well that would violate 'net neutrality'.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[wiredlogic]

Verizon is tier 1. They dont buy transit. They do transit. You dont get to dump many times as much data on another transit network as they dump on yours without consequences.

This is the crux of the problem. The FTC needs to break up backbone providers from their consumer ISP services or at least force them to manage them separately so that the 800 pound gorillas can't engage in these sort of anti-competitive practices.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Chandon Seldon]

As Level 3 already pointed out, requesting traffic settlement is absurd when your customers don't even have symmetric connections. It's just gaming the system, and when people game the system the system changes.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Archangel Michael]

Competition is actually pretty healthy once you get out of that residential last-mile

The solution is to break up Monopoly of the Last mile. Municipal owned transport media (Fiber) back hauled to a COLO where several ISPs can offer their services is the only solution that is viable in the long term. Then Verizon FIOS, Comcast, TimeWarner, Cox, Charter and all the rest can compete on "we offer high speed Netflix", and Cable Channels people actually want.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Archangel Michael]

The only way to fix this at this stage is to let your congresspeople know that you'll fire them if they don't fix this.

This is not the only way to fix it. It isn't even the best way to fix it. It isn't even the cheapest way to fix it. This is the stupidest way to fix it.

The best way to fix it, is to free the last mile from Monopolies. Build out Municipal Fiber, build a COLO facility for ISPs to offer their wares to the Municipal Customers, using the now UNRESTRICTED last mile. No need for any "laws" or "regulations" or big money spent on politics. Fix the problem were it starts, last mile.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[dkman]

It doesn't seem bad now, but this will destroy the internet if we allow it.

It doesn't? I currently have the choice of TWC (without contract) or ATT (with contract). I'll give you one guess which one I'm using.

And I realize that's more choice than a lot of people have.

How exactly do you propose to boycott the broadband providers we're allowed to choose from?

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Shatrat]

I don't think you break up a monopoly by building Municipal fiber. You just create a new Monopoly. Maybe that monopoly is benevolent, or maybe you live in Illinois and it's a perfect blend of incompetent and corrupt. I think a better step would be to break up or limit franchise agreements which are a big reason there is so little competition in the last mile.
Kudos for spelling 'colo' right though.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Zxern]

Not really. The last mile infrastructure could owned by the municipality, isp's then compete with each other to offer services over it.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[the_B0fh]

Yes you are defending them.

--picking nits.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[the_B0fh]

Without fixing your congress critters, how do you plan to get to your nirvana?

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Eristone]

Actually for most people in the U.S., the cost of gasoline at $4.50/gallon is the tipping point - this was proven the summer before the market went boom - gasoline consumption dropped. As far as boycotting - it is going to have to be something besides price pressure, unless you are able to start nailing the providers who are doing this sort of thing for monopolistic practices.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Shatrat]

Do they compete to offer services over it, or do they buy the mayor's nephew a new car? Instead of building an open fiber network, you might just end up building out Comcast's fiber network for them. I don't see this working out well, at least not in large swathes of the USA.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[rickb928]

And Netflix programming is uplifting, educational, and inspiring?

House of Cards makes me want to storm Washington. the rest is, well, pretty much a lot like what Verizon is peddling.

Come to think of it, HoC is too.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[suutar]

By "compete to offer services" I think he meant that each of them gets to put their bits on the fiber (there's enough capacity) and the end user chooses whose bits they pay to decrypt.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[rickb928]

When gasoline goes to $20/gallon, people;

- stop eating out just to save on the fuel

- start combining trips to the grocery to avoid fuel costs, which coincidentally reduces those impulse purchases as as fraction of the total

- stop taking their kids to soccer three times a week. And piano classes, gymnastics, robot league, etc...

And school systems start surcharging for the bus for field trips.

The analogy breaks down a little.

But, if Netflix does go to $50/month, do we start watching something else? Hell yeah.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[suutar]

The point is that traffic that is on the network because of my request is my responsibility. I'm paying Comcast to shovel bits from Netflix to me. I'm paying Netflix to answer my requests. Netflix is doing their job. Why isn't Comcast?

Now, if Netflix hands off to Level3, they have to pay Level3 because I don't. But Comcast and I have an arrangement. If they really need more than I'm paying them to handle the traffic that I have caused, they should talk to me about it. Instead they try to get it from Netflix, which will eventually cause Netflix to increase what they're charging me. The net result is the same, but Comcast is hoping that I'll get mad at Netflix. And sadly many of their customers probably will.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[rickb928]

Residential ISP service is pretty much asymmetrical. I click here and there, and get a few gigs of movie as data. It;'s been this way forever, since when I ran an ISP off of a pair of T-1s, a Cisco 2600, and a Livingston box. One of the T-1s was all dial in ports. those were the days...

Not only did my customers show asymmetric data (10% up, 90% down often) but they railed about speed that only exceeded expectations by 10-25%. Customers.

Complaints that the business is so asymmetrical that it's unfair are nearly specious. That is the definition of the business. You're just extorting form the media providers, and lying to your customers. It ought to be regulated, but I don't yet know if we can get that done.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Shatrat]

Decrypt? I think you're inventing networking technology. In a utopian muni network, the muni would offer MEF compliant E-Access service over whatever GPON, EPON, WDM-PON solution they choose. The customers would appear as VLANs at a ENNI handoff at the local CO or the nearest NAP/IXC. This is how it already works in a wholesale/large enterprise market and it's easy to buy service from one provider through an access network run by another.
Another solution that would work would be to just provide plain unbundled IP service and allow the muni customers to buy voice and video services over the top. I'm sure 3rd party IPTV could be made to work over an peered access network.

Either way, I have no doubt this would be captured and squeezed and we'd sit around blaming $OTHER_POLITICAL_PARTY for the next 50 years.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[suutar]

You've gone into a good bit more detail than I was thinking (or aware of :) I had been thinking the data would have to be encrypted to keep folks from watching stuff they hadn't paid for but that's because for some reason I was thinking in the cable model where everyone gets all the bits, rather than a switched network model where you only see the bits that are sent to you. I must need more coffee.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Gr8Apes]

You're missing another point - I already paid Comcast for 'x' amount of bandwidth, and should I choose to use 'x' amount of that bandwidth continuously, I can. Now here's the rub - Comcast has no issue with me using their content servers, but should I choose Netflx. . . wait, is that a conflict of interest I hear roaring over your head?

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[thule]

Yeah, because peering sucks. It will be the ruin of the Internet! Nevermind that peering saved the Internet when people were predicting the Internet would crash in the late 90's early 2000's.

Peering cuts both ways. A company like Netflix wants to reduce their cost of transit by peering. But then they have to make sure all those peering points are up to snuff. The mistake Netflix made was to let some other company handle peering for them. A company that had existing settlement free agreements with the target networks.

I suppose Netflix could have backed off and gone pure transit, but it would have created other problems.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[thule]

Wow... someone that knows what they are talking about! Thanks for the post!

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Jane Q. Public]

Good luck with that. People won't give up gasoline and they won't give up their shitty media. You can depend on that.

It isn't that they won't. It's that they don't have choices. Which makes this doubly bad.

Many people have kept pointing to Big Cable as an example of "capitalism gone bad". But the real problem is exactly the opposite. Most of the United States has only one cable provider in their area. So there is no competitive market. The big cable companies have "compartmentalized" the country and decided on who can service what area. (Which they ADMIT to, but which is grossly illegal, against federal antitrust law. In fact they CLAIM ownership of this illegal behavior, and actually tout it as a "reason" why the FCC should approve the merger: because they're not competing anyway. That is incredibly arrogant and really rather stupid.)

I make my living via the internet. And I only have one cable provider in my area. That is Not A Good Thing.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Shatrat]

There is some shared medium in all the PON applications, but the segregation of traffic is handled within the PON implementation. All the customer and 3rd party service provider should see would be a transparent VLAN-tagged Ethernet pipe.
I'm not a PON expert so I don't know how security is handled. I don't know what would happen if I went out and bought my own GPON modem, plugged it into the fibers,and tried to sniff my neighbor's traffic. That's sort of outside the scope of the discussion though.

I do know if you look up all those acronyms and read the wikipedia articles, you'll know more about the future of telecom than most of the people who work in telecom. :)

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[geekmux]

When gasoline goes to $20/gallon, people;

- stop eating out just to save on the fuel

- start combining trips to the grocery to avoid fuel costs, which coincidentally reduces those impulse purchases as as fraction of the total

- stop taking their kids to soccer three times a week. And piano classes, gymnastics, robot league, etc...

And school systems start surcharging for the bus for field trips.

The analogy breaks down a little.

But, if Netflix does go to $50/month, do we start watching something else? Hell yeah.

There are a lot of people who's financial pressure point for ANY entertainment IS Netflix at less than $10/month.

Would I watch something else? Sure. It's called broadcast TV. For free.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[geekmux]

Actually for most people in the U.S., the cost of gasoline at $4.50/gallon is the tipping point - this was proven the summer before the market went boom - gasoline consumption dropped. As far as boycotting - it is going to have to be something besides price pressure, unless you are able to start nailing the providers who are doing this sort of thing for monopolistic practices.

There's only one problem with trying to nail the providers.

It is now illegal to call anyone a monopoly.

It is illegal to try and identify them, or shut them down in any way.

That sounds crazy? It goes against all current law?

Prove me wrong.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[geekmux]

Raise the cost of Netflix to $50/month, and you'll see a lot of people abandoning their shitty media too.

You really give people too much credit. You think anyone can see further than their own nose? Let me fix your statement for you: "Raise the cost of Netflix to $50/month, and you'll see a lot of people abandoning NetFlix and settling for Verizon's own Video-on-Demand/Streaming service because that one won't be throttled." Plus as a nice extra, Verizon's in house video service will be packed with programs that make you stupid and docile so you won't revolt again in the future.

I'll just take that last part there and not even bother with a response. You've already described the apathy that got us here today, as well as the mindless masses who won't do a damn thing about it.

I mean let's put it this way, convincing people to turn OFF the boob tube isn't ever an option, no matter how effective it would be.

You're right.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Bengie]

When gasoline goes to $20/gallon, people;

Stop going to work because it costs them more to drive to work than what they make.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Bengie]

GPON and WDM-PON use AES and roll random keys every so much time. I think only the down-traffic to the ONTs is encrypted because the up-traffic to the port, only the port can see. Unless someone splices into the fiber, but that's not what the encryption is meant to protect against.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Bengie]

I love your logic. I should tell my ISP to start paying me for all the traffic they send me. You may want to revisit your logic on who pays during asymmetric data transfers, and it's not "the sender". Level 3 is a backbone ISP, unlike Comcast. Maybe Comcast should be paying Level 3 to access Netflix. Ever think of that?

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Bengie]

I think at least land-line ISPs should have to choose between charging on bandwidth or on datacap, but not both. If you get a datacap, then you automatically get their fastest tier.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[Bengie]

Level 3 will exchange transit for transit and probably in volumes of 100gb/s+ unless you have access to some niche market. Public information or not, few companies can handle this.

Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week

[mgcarley]

Perhaps you create a new monopoly, but if it's owned by the municipality or some other "non-profit" style entity, it's less of a problem - so long as it's possible to enforce a cap on the rates charged to the retail ISP, it should be OK.

Franchise agreements, on the other hand, are non-exclusive and have been for years (it is my understanding that exclusive agreements are illegal). The problem is getting municipalities to agree to another company digging OR getting the owner of the poles to charge a reasonable rate for attaching the cables.

Where I am (in IL, by the way) there are at least 7 companies trenching fiber (that I know of), all of it for enterprise use (although Frontier is *supposed* to have been deploying a pilot GPON network for "residential gigabit service", so far as I can tell nothing has been done along the routes I was told they would be building since they got awarded the money 14 months ago).

The thing that is really annoying the public works director is that Clearwave (who has the largest underground fiber deployment in the area) seems to just... take advantage of the leniency extended to them by way of their franchise agreement and digs pretty much where ever they like and/or the sub-contractors don't always follow the plans exactly as specified which has meant things like intrusions on other city services (such as water)...

IRL

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you feel if there were highways that only certain companies could use to distrubute their goods? Why do we allow this on the internet?

Re:IRL

[JoelKatz]

Because that's the reason people build the highways. AT&T builds highways for AT&T customers and charges everyone else to use them.

Re: IRL

[mSparks43]

I'm not sure I agree this is that bad a thing.
Surely the congested routers will now improve because they are not being congested by shitty Netflix traffic?

Why should everyone else have to pay for Netflix to deliver their services?

Surely the analogy is a lot like a coal company driving their coal through New York and instead paying to have a train line built straight to the port.

Why are people arguing this is a bad thing?

Re: IRL

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are people arguing this is a bad thing?

Ever greater barriers to entry. Only the biggest of players can afford the toll.

Re: IRL

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a terrible analogy.

Netflix customers DO pay for internet access & bandwidth to the ISP, this is just charging at both ends. How about having a toll highway that requests payment for *both* entry & exit.

Re:IRL

[Kokuyo]

I think your car analogy doesn't quite fit.

They are still using the same highways as everybody else, but now they have their own on and off ramp. Nothing more, nothing less.

I am actually not quite sure that this is a bad thing here... If you live in the suburbs, obviously you will have to cross quite a few intersections with traffic lights, before you get to you closest highway access. In my opinion, this is pretty normal. If you don't want to deal with it, you move closer to the highway access.
Netflix just paid money to have the highway access brought to them. Nothing wrong there. The fact that all the traffic lights are overloaded is not Netflix' problem. That is something between the municipality and the residents, so to speak.

Re:IRL

[JoelKatz]

Right. Each party pays half the costs of the traffic. When the costs don't naturally split in half, settlement-based peering is used.

Amazon, by intentional design, places servers that generate huge amounts of traffic in places where it costs them the least possible to deliver that traffic to AT&T. Meanwhile, it is much more expensive for AT&T to deliver that traffic to their customers because they can't move just to bring traffic costs down. We presume the traffic benefits AT&T and Amazon equally, so they should each pay half the cost. So Amazon owes AT&T half the difference between what it costs Amazon to carry the outbound traffic over their network and what it costs AT&T to carry the inbound traffic over their network.

This is how the Internet has worked for decades.

Re: IRL

[Drew M.]

I'm not sure I agree this is that bad a thing.
Surely the congested routers will now improve because they are not being congested by shitty Netflix traffic?

Why should everyone else have to pay for Netflix to deliver their services?

Surely the analogy is a lot like a coal company driving their coal through New York and instead paying to have a train line built straight to the port.

Why are people arguing this is a bad thing?

It's more like your telephone company deciding that it wants to have your calls you place to your brother get choppy and drop unless your brother decides to pay your telephone provider for the privilege of clear calls. Why should your brother also have to pay when you're already paying your phone company for service?

Re: IRL

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Exactly this. These companies are already getting paid, now they're blackmailing "the other end" to do what they're already being paid to do.

Re: IRL

[mSparks43]

He does, we both have to pay line rental. I pay for the call.

But that's a bad analogy here. There are four parties.
Me, My brother, netflix/big bandwidth consuming companies, and the other people using netflix/big bandwidth consuming companies.

and me and my bother are getting a choppy line because big bandwidth consuming companies are using our telepone to provide servies to other people. With the net neutrality argument being me and my brother should pay more for our line rental so other people can use our phone line.

Re:IRL

[thaylin]

That is NOT how it has worked for decades. Sure there have been paid agreements, UPSTREAM, but not with ISPs, whose customers generate ALL the traffic. ISPs benefit much more from the service providers been there then the service providers themselves because without the latter there would be no need for the ISP.

Re: IRL

[thaylin]

Except now your brother has to pay for his calls, AND your calls, he has to pay for his phone service provider and then your provider to make sure your calls are clear to him.

Re:IRL

[Rockoon]

That is NOT how it has worked for decades. Sure there have been paid agreements, UPSTREAM, but not with ISPs, whose customers generate ALL the traffic.

ISP's have traditionally purchased transit. The idea that ISP's have commonly gotten settlement free peering is laughable because it is quite uncommon for an ISP to do any peering at all. The ISP's that do have peering agreements are tier 2 or tier 1, and there are only a few dozen of those each in the entire world. These so called ISP's are transit networks that happen to also be providers.

Transit networks have always had to be paid for asymmetric flow. Settlement free only lasts so long as the ratio to and fro isnt far from balanced.

Netflix's current ISP is Level 3. Back in the days when Cogent was Netflix's ISP, Level 3 ended their settlement free agreement, disconnected from Cogent, and demanded money because Cogent had a very imbalanced ratio with them. Now that Level 3 is Netflix's ISP, they pretend that ratios don't matter. Bullshit.

Re:IRL

[thaylin]

So if an ISP becomes a teir one or tier 2 provider up stream that gives them the right to bottle neck their customers and create toll roads that would never have been there? This has not been the case previously because like you said, they "purchased transit".

Re:IRL

[Rockoon]

So if an ISP becomes a teir one or tier 2 provider up stream that gives them the right to bottle neck their customers and create toll roads that would never have been there?

If you dont like it, set up your own transit network and see how swell it is to increase your transit networks capacity in order to meet the needs of another transit networks profits.

I'm sure you are OK with being my networks transit bitch while I dominate the market with the lowest prices that I can offer because I get settlement free peering with a complete morons transit network.

Re:IRL

[bobbied]

How would you feel if there were highways that only certain companies could use to distrubute their goods? Why do we allow this on the internet?

It's called a "TOLL ROAD" and we DO have them. We also have Rail Roads, where if you want to put your freight on that system, you PAY the owner of the rails. Ever flown in an airplane, ridden a subway or a buss? You normally pay for that too.

The internet is not different, at least not all that different. If your business involves loads of traffic over somebody else's network, expect them to want a cut of the action.

What really should bother you though, is that Verizon customers like me have already paid them for access to the internet and that includes streaming of Netlix content. Now, I will have to pay them more as my Netflix subscription rate will go up to offset Verizon's cut. I already PAID (and paid dearly) for Netflix's traffic that I use, but now I will pay AGAIN for the same traffic though my Netflix subscription fees. THAT I don't like..

Re:IRL

[thaylin]

Umm, we are not talking about a transit network, we are talking about ISPs. They can be part of the same company, but they are not the same.

Re: IRL

[jbmartin6]

OK, so if two parties decide to make a huge number of calls to each other and overwhelm the system, who should pay for the extra capacity? Are you saying the phone company should be expected to provide infinite capacity at no additional charge? That doesn't seem in line with physical reality.

Re: IRL

[mSparks43]

How so?
What part of this is remotely like that.

Who's netflix? me or my brother?

Re: IRL

[mSparks43]

That sounds like a fundamental misuderstanding of what's happening.
you have your bandwidth, it's netfllix and the other big bandwidth hogs which haven't bought the bandwidth from them.
And because they aren't paying for the bandwidth they are using everyone else has a congested network outside of their ISP.

Re: IRL

[mSparks43]

How about a toll road that charges for both directions.
Can't see that ever catching on either.

Re:IRL

[JoelKatz]

ISP customers generate very little traffic. The vast majority of the traffic "eyeball networks" like ISPs carry is generated by others. It's not the ISP, or their customer, that has control over the bandwidth usage. Companies like Google and Netflix design the products they offer and control how they use bandwidth. The end user just uses the service, generally not needing to particularly care how much bandwidth it uses. If you want rational resource consumption, the costs of the usage of the resource have to be borne by the party that can control the use of the resource.

Your benefit argument is not rational, it's just spin. Without ISPs, services like Amazon or Netflix would have nobody to serve. The assumption that traffic between service providers and end users benefits both parties roughly equally is a perfectly rational one, and it's the one Internet companies have been using to drive their peering decisions for decades.

It is perfectly rational to assume that when an AT&T customer accesses Netflix, the packets that flow between AT&T and Netflix benefit both parties equally and thus the costs to carry that traffic should be split evenly between AT&T and Netflix. AT&T cannot move their customers to make the traffic cheaper to deliver, but Netflix does place their servers precisely where it is cheapest to generate traffic. Similarly, it is a simple fact that it is cheaper to have a small number of large bandwidth endpoints than a large number of small bandwidth endpoints. Thus Netflix incurs costs on its network that are substantially lower than AT&T incurs on its network for the same traffic. This has always been the conditions that have triggered settlement-based peering.

Re:IRL

[mSparks43]

->but now I will pay AGAIN for the same traffic though my Netflix subscription fees. THAT I don't like..

Pretty sure all the non netflix customers are quite happy with it though.

And if you don't like the price of netflix, it's not exactly like there aren't a hundred thousand other ways to get the same content without paying a cent more than you pay for access to the internet.

Re: IRL

[suutar]

It's more like you make long calls every night to your mom and she tells you all about her day. You pay for local service, she pays for local service, you pay for the call, she does the talking. Only now your phone company wants to charge your mom because she's doing all the talking.

Re:IRL

[rickb928]

Let's put it differently. If Verizon/AT&T/etc all decide to charge for incoming data from the heavy hitters, and they say no, when do customers stop actually using the service at all?

As in cancelling their cable TV subscription and relying on the Internet for media - paying more, but in the end lowering their costs.

Naw. the ISPs really don't care. They will jack your bill back up to where it was before. Until they reach the limits of elasticity.

Re:IRL

[Zxern]

This is the big problem here. ISP's want to treat this traffic as though it was transit traffic when it's not. As far as level 3 goes these networks are the destination as it's their customers requesting the traffic. It's like a doorman charging the pizza delivery guy for the privilege of entering the building to delver a pizza.

Re: IRL

[thaylin]

Netflix is your brother. You called him, he answered, but your phone provider wants to charge him for the call, even though he is already paying for phone service.

Re: IRL

[mSparks43]

So if he's paying for his service, and my phone provider isn't getting paid.
Then who's stealing his money?

Re: IRL

[thaylin]

Umm, your phone provider is getting paid by you, they should not be getting paid by him AGAIN, since they dont provide service to him, other than a toll (now) to provide access to you.. Are you really this dense, or just a troll?

Payment record

You - Your provider

Brother(netflix) - his provider

Brother(netflix) - Your provider - to ensure you can talk to him over a link you can understand each other one..This is where the theft is occuring

Re: IRL

[thaylin]

They are paying for their bandwidth.. The problem is not happening until it reaches the shared customers network, shared with the ISP and netflix, not at the transit networks. Netflix should only be paying for its ISP, which it is. Its ISP pays for the transit with peering agreements, and the customer pays for the endpoint connection, which they both are.

In this case Verizon is trying to act as a transit operator when they are an ISP. Verizon has a transit operation, but it should not get to charge like one when it is not performing that role.

Re: IRL

[thaylin]

If they offer x capacity they should be able to provide x capacity without the extra charge. In this case it is more of an issue that they are overselling and instead of bringing their network up to par with their offering they are charging extra.

And Comcast?

[mentil]

The summary implies (by omission) that congestion for Comcast customers hasn't improved since Netflix paid off Comcast. What're they getting for their money?

Re:And Comcast?

[fahrbot-bot]

The summary implies (by omission) that congestion for Comcast customers hasn't improved since Netflix paid off Comcast. What're they getting for their money?

A direct line to the Comcast 2nd tier support desk?

Re:And Comcast?

[dave-man]

It must depend on where you are. In Annapolis we are often running two Netflix streams plus web browsing and e-mail and my AT&T microcell. Works great.

Need municipal network.

[khasim]

You cannot boycott them while they still control the last mile (the connection to your house).

In order to take that control from them, people have to be willing to vote to have their local government install/maintain/tax a local network as part of the infrastructure.

Then the local government can lease connectivity to whomever wants to offer Internet service. If Comcast is charging extra for a service you want then you can go with a different option.

Re:Need municipal network.

[flopsquad]

^This, a thousand times. Unfortunately, telecom lobbyists spin these kinds of projects---pretty much the most pro-competition thing you can do in the broadband space---as anti-competitive, socialistic destruction of private business.

"Oh noes, big bad Peoria is going to bully poor little NBComcastWarner into bankruptcy! We can't let those damn commies in Big Government provide vital services to their citizens!"

Isn't this what Netflix OpenConnect is for?

[schweini]

Could someone explain why all of this is an issue, when Netflix seems to be giving away their OpenConnect CDN boxes for free, so that ISPs can cache most of the Netflix traffic inside their own network?

Re:Isn't this what Netflix OpenConnect is for?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Could someone explain why all of this is an issue, when Netflix seems to be giving away their OpenConnect CDN boxes for free, so that ISPs can cache most of the Netflix traffic inside their own network?

Verizon has a competing (to some extent, anyway) video service. Their incentives have been aligned to make Netflix bad for customers.

Re:Isn't this what Netflix OpenConnect is for?

[Solandri]

Could someone explain why all of this is an issue, when Netflix seems to be giving away their OpenConnect CDN boxes for free,

Netflix is being a good netizen by giving away those boxes for free.

Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, TWC are being bad netizens by making Netfix pay them to accept the boxes, while simultaneously blaming Netflix for being a bandwidth hog and poor streaming service. How can you blame someone for a problem when they're giving away the solution for free, and you're just refusing to accept the solution unless they pay you.

Re:Isn't this what Netflix OpenConnect is for?

[TubeSteak]

Verizon has a competing (to some extent, anyway) video service.

Verizon owned a majority stake in Redbox's online streaming, which just shut down.
Verizon also announced plans to launch a new online video platform sometime next year.

Re:Isn't this what Netflix OpenConnect is for?

[Shatrat]

I work for a large ISP. We love the Netflix and Google cache boxes because they reduce our network costs and congestion and improve our customer experience. But we also do not rely on video as a revenue stream like cable and FTTH companies...

The problem is competition

[Roodvlees]

http://www.newyorker.com/news/...
http://www.digitopoly.org/2014...

Look at how the Netherlands organized it, we have the best internet in the world :)
Everyone in the US knows this, but the political system is broken and unable to do anything other than obey the powerfull cable companies.

...right.

[XO]

...Is this any different from the quite common practice of buying links on multiple networks, so that you have faster connections to those networks? That thing that people have been doing for decades?

Possible solution

[Solandri]

As a Netflix subscriber whose ISP does not charge them for peered access, it is simply Wrong that part of my subscription fee is being used to pay Comcast, Verizon, etc. when I have no business relationship with them.

Netflix should revamp their billing structure. In addition to their monthly fee, there should be a separate line item for an ISP surcharge. If your ISP does not charge Netflix, then that surcharge is $0. If your ISP does charge them, then the surcharge is how much Netflix pays them divided by the number of Netflix customers on that ISP. Let the people using those ISPs eat the costs their ISPs are adding, and make it damn obvious that the ISP is the one responsible for the surcharge. Don't hide it in Netflix's regular bill and make the rest of us pay for it.

Re:Possible solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Time Warner and I still kind of agree with this. Netflix should pass this cost through to the customer, and in fact allow the customer to decide whether THEY want to pay the carrier the extra fee. Netflix should call it the Time Warner Fast Lane Fee, the Verizon Fast Lane Fee, etc. and explain clearly what this fee is being used for.

I have a feeling that a lot of people will feel that they're ALREADY paying their carriers and cable providers, and this may finally bring some understanding and clarity to the general public of what Net Neutrality is all about.

Re:Possible solution

[BringsApples]

Netflix should revamp their billing structure. In addition to their monthly fee, there should be a separate line item for an ISP surcharge. If your ISP does not charge Netflix, then that surcharge is $0. If your ISP does charge them, then the surcharge is how much Netflix pays them divided by the number of Netflix customers on that ISP.

Yeah, because that'd be easy for Netflix keep up with.

Re:Possible solution

[ERJ]

You seem to be under the impression that the bandwidth that is used to provide you with Netflix streaming is free. All this does is remove the peering bandwidth needed between the normal Netflix provider (Cogent I think) and Verizon.

This is not a black and white issue...there is some definite grey area here. Should Netflix be able to choose an ISP and expect to be able to provide service to their customers? Yes. Should Verizon provide unlimited asymetric bandwidth to that ISP without receiving compensation from the selected ISP? No. Should the selected ISP be charging that additional cost back to Netflix? I would think so.

The only thing that would change my mind here is whether the big ISPs were specifically limiting Netflix traffic, treating it differently than other traffic across the peering relationship. Otherwise this just becomes an issue of asymmetric peering arguments which happen all the time but have just entered the publics view because of the popularity of Netflix.

Re:Possible solution

[Mr D from 63]

Yeah, its would be a nightmare and an added overhead cost to bill that way. They could simply publish the numbers of what the average cost per customer is, but if that number winds up being very low on a per person basis, then it might lead to apathy on the matter.

Re:Possible solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Then blame your ISP for overselling beyond their capacity to provide....

There was no "no Netflix" clause in my contract when I purchased the broadband connection...

Re:Possible solution

[RingDev]

Lets say I pay a sub shop for a sandwich. I then pay you to go get my sandwich. When you get to the sup shop, you tell them that if they want to have their sandwich delivered, they will also have to pay you.

At this point, if they decline to pay you, I'll never get my sandwich, which will impact my willingness to order sandwiches from them again.

And unfortunately, you personally are the only one who can get the sandwich for me. So I can't go out and find another sandwich getter.

That is the issue. Negotiating around an asymmetrical peering agreement isn't the end of the world. Allowing an entity with a monopoly dictate the negotiation of an asymmetrical peering agreement is a huge problem to the market.

-Rick

Re:Possible solution

[nine-times]

As a Netflix subscriber whose ISP does not charge them for peered access, it is simply Wrong that part of my subscription fee is being used to pay Comcast, Verizon, etc. when I have no business relationship with them.

Any business you patronize is going to use some of your money for purposes that don't directly benefit you. Microsoft used some of the money I paid for Windows/Office to fund the development of the XBox, and I don't own an XBox. Boo hoo.

Re:Possible solution

[mrchaotica]

The only trouble is that Netflix doesn't necessarily know who my ISP is. Maybe one day I'm watching it at home on Comcast, then another day I'm watching it on my phone with T-Mobile, then another day I'm watching it using a restaurant's wi-fi. For it to be "fair," Netflix would have to keep track of which ISP everybody was connecting through at any given moment and then pro-rate the surcharge.

Re:Possible solution

[ERJ]

Except that your analogy does not at all describe the situation...

To put it in your terms, it is more like your sub shop has a bike delivery person and I have a delivery person. For no additional cost my delivery person will meet your delivery person half way. Occasionally this means that extra time will be taken in order to facilitate the hand off. Now, my delivery person goes to the sub shop and offers, for a fee, to guarantee that they will always deliver the sandwich the whole way in a timely manner.

I am not ignorant. I know there is dirty dealings going on here. But the ISPs do have some valid arguments in this...it is not a one sided argument. Net neutrality does not mean that everyone gets as much bandwidth as they want. It just means that packets and not treated unequally and are subject to the same congestion regardless of type or content. Like I said in my initial post, if they are treating the packets differently that is something I do not agree with but if we are simply talking a peering argument than the ISPs just need to work it out.

Re: Possible solution

[RingDev]

I disagree with the your analogy in that Netflix does not have any means by which to deliver to me directly. They provide a service accessible to the ISPs. The ISPs are using that service I their sales pitch to me the customer.

As for the behavior of ISPs, check the more recent.post about ISPs altering packets. Specifically the linked video of the guy showing the difference in quality of Netflix direct and Netflix via VPN. It becomes immediately obvious that there is an artificial cap that Verizon was enforcing on Netflix traffic. We've seen the same results over other ISPs numerous times over the last few years.

Before netflix it was the torrents. The ISPs will always look for ways to exploit their market control to maximize profits.

I'm with you that without the monopolies there wouldn't be an issue. But because of the realities we deal with, this type of behavior has to be monitored, objected to, and quite likely legislated.

-Rick

Re: Possible solution

[ERJ]

The VPN thing in and of itself doesn't mean anything unless you can prove that the route it takes is the same. Internet routing, in general, is handled as best route not least congested route. If your direct route to Netflix goes through a congested peering point while the VPN connection has clean routes to you and netflix then the quality could certainly be better.

Re:Possible solution

[Zalbik]

It's a little more complex than that. I believe it's more like this:

Little Johnny Verizon opens a sandwich delivery service. He offers "Guaranteed sandwiches in 10 minutes". This isn't a problem for him, as there are only 5 people ordering sandwiches and he can easily get them all delivered in 10 minutes.

Net d'Flix opens a new sandwich shop. It's really really popular. People start asking Little Johnny to deliever sandwiches from d'Flix. Little Johnny (being a little bit greedy) signs up a bunch of new customers. Unfortunately, d'Flix sandwiches take more time to make, and little Johnny can't guarantee his 10 minute delivery time anymore. At the same time, Little Johnny's brother (Fios Verizon) opened his own sandwich shop. Little Johnny gets a kickback from Fios for every sandwich he delivers, so he REALLY wants people to buy from Fios. Unfortunately, Fios' sandwiches are terrible and can only be ordered in "combo packages" where if you really like pickles, you have to order mustard and lettuce as well.

Little Johnny then has a great idea "I'll just tell d'Flix that I won't deliver their sandwiches in 10 minutes unless they pay more money to hire another delivery guy, plus a little extra for my inconvenience". People will whine about their sandwiches not being fresh, and d'Flix will have to pay up.

Now this entire time, Little Johnny hasn't been meeting his "10 minute delivery guarantee", but he doesn't really care as he's the only sandwich delivery person in town, and people really like their sandwiches.

Supply Chain Management

[Shane McEwan]

It's called Supply Chain Management and has been happening in the manufacturing industry for decades. A car manufacturer will negotiate SLAs, minimum quality thresholds and delivery deadlines with parts suppliers, freight companies and distributors to ensure that a quality product is produced quickly and cheaply.

It was only a matter of time before Internet companies start doing the same. They either build their own networks (a la Google) or they negotiate exclusive deals with other ISPs. Fast and reliable access to their services is vital to their business and they MUST manage it. They cannot rely on the good graces of ISPs.

Oh goody !!

[dheltzel]

Now that Verizon is getting revenue from the upstream side because they have so many customers wanting to use Netflix, I'm just sure they will reduce the monthly fees they charge their customers, seeing as their customers are now their product. ( -- for anyone getting ready to "correct" me)

Re:Oh goody !!

[Charliemopps]

They didn't gain much revenue from anything. Peering isn't something any ISP makes much profit on.
Verizon has its own peering provider. It, of course, gets the best deal from that provider. Everyone else in the world that wants large bandwidth access to their network knows this and uses that peering provider. ATT has their own, Comcast, everyone. They do this on purpose because a 3rd party can just sit there an leach money from them if they have to use that. ATT and Verizon will both have peers with each other. Charge each other the same rate, and viola, it's a recipricol agreement. No-one loses any money. This is the way it works. Netflix tried to use their large bandwidth and notoriety to change that. They failed.

The price difference to Netflix would probably be laughable to you if you saw it. A few hundred dollars a month at most. These large peering agreements are in the thousands of a dollars. I've seen them, most companies don't even blink at the price difference between providers. Now maybe Verizon jacked up the price to Netflix, I wouldn't know. But given how vocal Netflix has been about the whole deal I'm pretty sure they'd have mentioned that had it been ridiculous. Netflix tried to change how the money flowed. This could have fragmented the internet into "those willing to pay" and "Those who aren't" I find it hilarious that it's been portrayed as the polar opposite. These ISPs really need to work on their PR.

No surprise there...

[buckfeta2014]

Netflix Video Speed On FiOS Doubles After Netflix-Verizon Deal

We all knew that ISPs were throttling netflix. We called them liars after they repeatedly lied to the FCC. Netflix ponies up some dough and now speeds are roughly what they should have been in the first place. Why should we be surprised now?

Re:No surprise there...

[jbmartin6]

Did we? Verizon was doing no such thing. Netflix was coming into Verizon over congested links. There was no 'throttle' any more than the government is 'throttling' your car doing your local rush hour. Netflix paid to get a dedicated link, problem solved. It isn't a question of neutrality or 'slow lanes' on the Internet, it is a question of physical limitations trumping wishful thinking.

Re:And it mattered not one whit to me

[Anonymous Coward]

ASCII porn running in Lynx?

lol

[Charliemopps]

It's hilarious that no-one understands how this works. This is proof positive that this has nothing to do with net-neutrality.

Netflix chose a peer that was expensive for Verizon but cheep for Netflix.
Verizon said No... Netflix made this big stink about net neutrality.
Verizon said no, we have our own peering, hook up to that.
Why on earth would Verizon pay a 3rd party for Netflixes interconnect?!?!
Netflix then moves the interconnect to Verizon... Of course the problem is solved! ...and for those of you wondering... these interconnect prices are virtually free on the scale Verizon and Netflix are working at. This entire thing has been a tempest in a teapot. This was about who had control over the interconnects. None of them gave a crap about the pittance it currently cost. The problem was that Netflix was trying to change the status quo and gain control over part of the network.

Re:lol

[Chrisq]

... these interconnect prices are virtually free on the scale Verizon and Netflix are working at.

Where can I get one!

Re:lol

[Charliemopps]

Call up any of the big players. They'll hook you up, no problem. Data links are not expensive at all. It's getting that data from the data center to your house that's the problem. The actual link between a company like Verizon and a Company like AT&T is usually nothing more than a fiber optic cable that's less than 20ft long. That's it. All the long haul trunking you do yourself.

I suspect you're suggesting "I want this at my house if it's so cheap!" Well yea... the problem is trunking it to your driveway. There is no existing route to your house. Building that would cost millions. But if you setup your own server in a major Datacenter (like Netflix/Verizon/ATT) the interconnect to those 3 networks would not be that expensive. And if they need just as much access to their network as they need to yours (like 2 competing ISPs) then the agreement should pretty much break even. At the end of the month the 2 ISPs have departments that true up the differences in bandwidth between them. If one is using a lot more they'll send a check.

Netflix was trying to argue that the ISP had to connect to whichever peer they decided to use. This setup a precedent that if the content is popular enough, they could make any deal they wanted, with whomever they wanted, and force the ISPs to use it or setup Netflix equipment inside their own network (trust me, ISPs are very, very, averse to allowing 3rd party equipment inside their networks.) Netflix wanted partial control over the ISPs network. It should be clear why they balked.

The roads to and from Netflix were congested...

[jd2112]

NJ Governor Chris Christie style!

The system works - this is proof

[anthony_greer]

This is how the net is supposed to work. lets take this point by point. I hate that i am about to defend verizon but the reaction to this story seems to ignore key facts that need consideration.

The Netflix appliance: Why should any ISP be compelled to have 3rd party gear in their DC or NOC? The price of the hardware a small portion of the TCO...There is power and cooling to consider. What about the cost of the floorspace and the opportunity cost of what that rack space/floor space could be used for. This could set a precedent to set up devices for any other content provider.
The problem was not Verizon's network, clearly, it was the inability to get their content smoothly to the edge of verizons network. This was clearly an issue where peering didnt work as intended because of the volume of traffic going one direction - the simple fix is to set up a direct link to Verizons edge, which it sounds like they did. Thats how the internet works, if the standard peer based internetwork connectivity doesnt meet the needs of your application, you connect directly, or more directly, to the other end.

It seems like people are willing to throw away one of the greatest inventions in the history of humanity all to keep their precious netflix from going up in price a few bucks a month. Sad.

Bad analogy time.

[SuiteSisterMary]

Say you've got a land full of city states. Verizon-town, Comcast-town, AT&T-town, etc etc.

There is one or more superhighway running into each -town. These super-highways generally meet at an 'interconnect point' or 'peering point.' All of the towns build their own highways to the peering points, and because they all have generally the same amount of traffic trying to go back and forth, they don't really charge each other for them.

There are multiple peering points for various reasons.

Now, if I'm understanding correctly, Netflix-town (think small factory town, like) built a superhighway to a peering point that didn't happen to have a superhighway to Verizon-town. So they argued over who should build that superhighway.

In the mean time, traffic from Netflix-town to Verizon-town had to pass through other towns first, with predictable results.

Netflix has now gotten around to building a superhighway to a peering point that Verizon-town is connected to, and HOLY SHIT, suddenly they can move a ton of traffic into Verizon-town.

But Netflix doesn't take data from Verizon-town, like, say, another large ISP might, so why would Verizon-town pay to build said superhighway?

This isn't net neutrality; that would be the creation and sale of toll-roads *within* the various towns. Once Netflix-town's trucks hit Verizon-town's border, they get on the Verizon-town streets to their ultimate destination, same as everybody else. This just improves Netflix's ability to get delivery trucks to Verizon-town's borders.

Google next?

[synapse7]

I occasionally view instructional videos from youtube at the low default quality, the videos will play for roughly 10-15 seconds and then stop. I have to pause the video, wait for it to buffer and continue to do this to get through the video. I'm on a 60mb service which tests out fine, I can download over 7MB/sec but can't reliably stream 480p video from youtube.com.

Anybody else experiencing this with youtube?

Re:Google next?

[Shados]

Yup. It supposingly got better, but back when i was on FiOS (I moved and don't have it anymore), getting 360p on FiOS to stream ok was miracles. Even back then Netflix worked just fine, so did all the anime services (Crunchyroll, Funimation) in HD. I could download stuff pretty quickly. Youtube however? Even the "music only" videos with static images that should compress fairly well would barely run at all. Some MMO games (ie: FF14) were unplayable unless using a VPN service (1+ second lag spikes, constantly)

Would Google-DNS / OpenDNS "Hurt" my speeds now?

[kannibal_klown]

Long-time FIOS user.

Would using Google's DNS or Open DNS negate any benefits from however they set things up now post-deal?

I toggle Google DNS because a couple months back, for whatever reason, my FIOS was acting up and I tracked it down to that. Used FIOS DNS and it was cruddy, switched to Google DNS and it was fine, back to FIOS it was cruddy... so I left it as Google DNS. It might have been a short-term problem for a day or so but I haven't bothered switching back.

The thing is, someone was saying that now... FIOS's DNS might redirect me to the good/fast route or internal server setup for Netflix while Google DNS (or Open DNS) might take the "unoptimized route"

Anyone know for sure?

Re:Would Google-DNS / OpenDNS "Hurt" my speeds now

[kannibal_klown]

I should clarify... by "acting up" I mean regular webpage browsing... not Netflix.

It was acting funny -- slow speeds, page not found's, etc.

So I switched it. As mentioned it was probably a short-term issue for a few hours or a day or something and I just happened to catch it at the beginning. But I didn't bother switching back.

Obviously the answer is: switch back. But my concern is if it becomes an ongoing issue... will I have to choose between Netflix and the rest of the web.

Re:Would Google-DNS / OpenDNS "Hurt" my speeds now

[kannibal_klown]

DNS does not handle routing...at least not directly.

It's job is to take a human readable address and convert it to an ip address.

How to talk to this IP is a router's job to figure it out.

Just keep in mind that some addresses might be more popular than others....

I understand that.

But I don't know how they setup this "fix"

Did they just put local mirrors of NetFlix content in their server farm? And have stream2775.netflix.com point to a local node instead of the "real" stream2775.netflix.com out on the Internet?

In which case, Google DNS would point to the real one on the Internet while the FIOS one points to the local node inside their server-room.

Franchise authority

[fulldecent]

If you have problems with your local internet (or cable) service provider, there is only one correct audience for your complaint. Competition is regulated LOCALLY, just like wars are handled NATIONALLY and family budgeting is a DOMESTIC issue. The FCC advises at https://www.fcc.gov/guides/cab... to direct complaints to local franchising authorities.

For example, with Comcast, they are required to plainly put this contact information on your bill. See for example this bill http://comcastbills.com/Compar... The franchise authority is on the bottom right. If you have unrequested upcharges on your bill and then the ISP fixes it, that is fine -- but you should also make a report to the LFA so they can see the pattern. You can also call the LFA first.

Talk of boycotts are not effective. Talking about Obama is not effective. Talking to your ISP is not effective. This is because you are not the customer. Your local regulatory commission is the customer. And they are not helping us because they do not understand the issues. They do not use pipe analogies and don't read slashdot. They worry about school funding, local taxes, AARP, and baking brownies. If you've read this far you already know what to do.

How to change your ISP but still stay same ISP

[Tyr07]

Here's how this works.
You pay your ISP, the last mile provider for your last mile connection.

Next, you select a datacenter that is on the network / provider you like and or support. You then setup a vps or dedicated server.
You tunnel all of your traffic through an encrypted VPN to that datacenter, and access the internet from there.

Congratulations, you are no longer having them shape and route traffic as they have no idea what information you are sending or receiving besides that it's a VPN connection. They can guess, but unless they start restricting that, which will affect corporate customers who have to vpn into work places, you'll be fine.

You have just won the internet, and selected your ISP, separately from your last mile provider.

This way you don't have to just cancel internet, can make ISP's life difficult, and if everyone does it, potentially force them to listen, maybe, a little.

You want high QOS video? PAY FOR IT.

[klic]

The internet is not some abstract infinite channel, where packets are created from nothing and move globally for free. It is a finite amount of expensive optical fiber and routing equipment with finite capacity. How is that to be used? Presumably to generate financial returns for those who paid for all that equipment. Where do the packets come from? Increasingly, from Hollywood, via services like Netflix.

Netflix video-on-demand is a horribly inefficient and intrusive way to use internet infrastructure. If you move gigabytes of high definition low latency video through a finite web, peer-to-peer, my web searches and information downloads are in competition. True net neutrality means you get as much bandwidth as I do, inbound and outbound, for the same price, which is a lot less bandwidth and lower Quality of Service than you are demanding now. At least Netflix understands that their video-on-demand model requires expensive physical equipment to implement; too bad their customer's brains have been turned into pudding by that video.

I used to offer unrestricted free wifi to my neighborhood. I liked the idea that poor schoolkids could work on their homework, travellers could consult online maps, visitors could check their email. Then the TV addicts discovered it, and filled my pipe with netflix packets. So I "violated net neutrality" and throttled the maximum bandwidth. The wifi can still be used for the beneficial uses I encourage, but video QOS sucks. As a bonus, I can worry less about a DMCA takedown. People can still move video, but they must wait a while.

Video addicts - please, please, please do boycott the internet. Feed your brain-rotting addiction with cable, DVDs, broadcast, satellite, and all the other low-cost ways that actually pay the producers and purveyors of your high-definition drivel. Your gigabyte road trains do not belong on the information highway until you pay for the extra resources to accomodate them.

  Freedom of speech means Libre, not Gratis. Pay for what you take.

This is good news

[cp5i6]

As a Fios user

I'm hoping to finally be able to get back to watching stutter-free my favorite non Netflix websites now that a good chunk of the crappy Verizon/Level3 interconnect has been freed up.

#winning

Re:And it mattered not one whit to me

[msobkow]

Apparently having a different view on things is discouraged nowadays, because every time I disagree with the slashbot masses on politics and theory, I get modded down.

Mod points aren't "disagree" points, assholes. If you disagree, start a discussion.